Australia’s Nuclear CONference on the defensive
Christina Macpherson, 26 july 13 The spin about ‘Australia’s Nuclear Future” has been buzzing around the media for a while now. The latest headlines – “Embrace nuclear power” “Nuclear power would save $150 billion” spread the spin from the pro nuclear lobby – worthy gentlemen of middle age or beyond, mainly from backgrounds of nuclear physics and engineering. They produce the usual stuff about solving climate change, radiation from Fukushima not a worry, how cheap nuclear power is, and the Australian public coming to like nuclear.
But the key to where Australia’s nuclear lobby is at, is to see what long time nuke spruiker Michael Angwin has to say in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Michael Angwin knows what the real situation is, and what the Australian nuclear lobby’s campaign must be. It has to educate, or as Angwin tactfully put it “to advocate”.
Here’s some of Angwin’s spiel:
“People are very susceptible to having their fears stoked by the clever PR people from anti-nuclear NGOs who know how much impact a mushroom-cloud superimposed on the image of a small boy will have.
Nuclear experts know radiation risks associated with nuclear power are very small; but that is little comfort for the targets of NGO spin doctors….
nuclear advocates [must] engage with Australians directly – both broadly and locally – and systematically.
Nuclear advocacy in Australia has mainly been carried out by knowledgeable and informed individuals, science-based organisations and, to some extent, the uranium industry. It has been opportunistic and enthusiastic. If nuclear advocates wish to build on that base, a more strategic and organised approach will be necessary. It still needs to be discovered”
One might ponder why Michael Angwin expects us to believe him, and not those anti nuclear people, seeing that he has an obvious career and financial motive as head of the Australian Uranium Association, and they clearly don’t.
Anyway, from recent articles n by nuclear enthusiasts,it is pretty clear that they see – not cost, not regulation, not renewables competition – but public opinion as the big stumbling block to nuclear power.
Get ready for a renewed media onslaught – as those few news journailists who have not yet been sacked are force fed tripe from the nuclear and uranium industries.
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